Turkish Delight Almond Milk

What does one do with a box of lemon and rose turkish delight that’s been sitting in the grocery cupboard for well over a year? Let’s just say the benefits of maturity do not extend to lokum. The sweets, hard as they’d become, were not a toothsome delight.

I decided to melt them down into a kind of usable dessert syrup. I rinsed them off and placed in a pot with triple their volume in water, and set the mixture to boil; stirring and skimming off the cloudy skin as it reduced. Once most of the turkish delight had melted, I used an immersion blender to blitz out the rest, and added some lemon juice to enhance the flavour and a bit of red food colouring for cosmetic value. They were decanted into glass bottles and left to cool.

Because of the cornflour traditionally added to turkish delight, the mixture thickened up on standing. As it turned out, I had made turkish delight jam. I could definitely get some mileage out of a spread.

My first application was to use the jammy syrup in a hot beverage. I melted about two spoonfuls in the microwave until it reached pouring consistency. I placed some into an Aeroccino and topped off with almond milk (Almond Breeze froths up quite well), setting the mixture to heat and froth. To serve, I dropped a spoonful of the syrup each into turkish tea glasses and poured in the hot foamy turkish delight-flavoured milk.

I am a freelance writer and photographer (look for me as ShootCake). I have an MA in Creative Writing from Rhodes University, Grahamstown and some of my work has appeared in local literary journals. A food pornographer by calling, I would like to one day create a confessional recipe book in measures of rhythm and breath.